The bike was left to Cuauhtémoc Lázaro Hernández de la Cruz by his second cousin who had gone to live en el Norte at the age of ten. By fourteen the cousin had given in to gang life in New Mexico. By sixteen he was dead; found in the city dump by a vagrant. In the short life that he lived the cousin had amassed only two symbols of success: one a giant silver crucifix and a two-wheeled candy apple green low rider bicycle named Esmeralda, built to his exact specifications one chrome twisted pipe at a time.

I had to leave Miss Clarissa in her sick room. I was sent to the smokehouse to get meats for the cook. When I arrived, I gave the overseer the list and waited as he told a slave the quantities of each meat to load on the wagon. The slave then told me to follow him into the smokehouse, where there was a low fire burning on the dirt floor and meats dangling from the rafters.

Anifre knew the others would soon know what she'd known all of this time, but they—the residents of Little Black—would never readily say anything. They'd simply stare at her neck, then her shoulders, her arms, her elbow's crook. They’d linger there, too civil and provincial to let their gazes drop to her wrists, to her hands' unconscious flutterings at her stomach. But this couldn't go on for much longer.

Hoisting onto the tiled sill in front of a window that lets in no light, Ilyana fires up a cigarette, and pushes smoke from her nose in lean, controlled wisps. She picks at the crust on her infected lobes. She adjusts the dollar sign earrings that dangle to her chin and smooth the angles in her face.

The door swings open.  Farnaz cringes into view.